We do have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation-speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also very wrong. You can (legally! Ethically! GDPR-compliantly!) collect all sorts of data with which to improve your product. I've seen it done, I've done it myself.
There are a lot of people here, German and non-German alike, trying to furiously recreate the SV way of doing things, as if that's the only way to build a strong tech industry. To me that's both uninteresting (why replicate the same model everywhere?) and bad business (not all markets are the same, and that's not a bad thing). Maybe people would be more successfully adapting to the local context. It's certainly working for a handful of startup incubators I know in Berlin.
As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also very wrong. You can (legally! Ethically! GDPR-compliantly!) collect all sorts of data with which to improve your product. I've seen it done, I've done it myself.
There are a lot of people here, German and non-German alike, trying to furiously recreate the SV way of doing things, as if that's the only way to build a strong tech industry. To me that's both uninteresting (why replicate the same model everywhere?) and bad business (not all markets are the same, and that's not a bad thing). Maybe people would be more successfully adapting to the local context. It's certainly working for a handful of startup incubators I know in Berlin.